Libs, walking straight into chud talking points and framing in a blissfully innocent attempt at "nuance" since...1650? Earlier? Fucked if I know they've always been this way.
The usual GC types are already making out-of-context clips.
Uphold TC69 thought, combat liberalism, We love and fight with our Trans Comrades!
I'm seeing a lot of my centrist and lib friends "care about kids" nowadays and it's fucking depressing.
I always turn that around and say "and the kids who are trans? what about them? What specific actions are you proposing to ensure they get what they need as quickly as possible?"
It shuts them up pretty fast when they realise their answer is "Suffer because I really hope my kid isn't trans and the problem will go away on its own and I am actually exactly like the boomers in 1995 who are afraid their child is gay that I mock over my Pinot Noir."
Thanks for this. It's gonna come up more and more, and honestly it's not my strongest issue to debate.
I know an older woman (late GG/Early Boomer) and she is cis and white and centre right devout Anglican. And she is desperately trying to get her late Gen X children to accept their Son who is falling into a cycle of despair. It's heartbreaking (though we do what we can and the kid is being introduced to networks that will help.
To Combat Liberalism isn't just a meme, it does sometimes mean we need to be "THAT GUY" over dinner.
Super agree, comrade. Thanks for helping me prepare. :fidel-salute-big:
Guy I talk to online was just asking questions about the sanctity of women's sports. Openly admitted he doesn't actually follow women's sports (and thus obviously doesn't actually give a shit). That was the moment I stopped respecting him.
I'd say "when have you cared about women's issues before?" Because most of the guys I see going down this path are actual chuds and not feminists.
Although I'm not really knowledgeable about this sort of thing, trans women in women's sports is outrageously small. Like I'm assuming that it's maybe double digit number of cases in most countries, if that. The same people will minimise climate change and covid which literally kill/ will kill many millions.
You mean in a Satanic Panic 2.0 sense, or something else? I've noticed a lot of "caring about kids" that seems like a mistranslation of "wanting to force children into Christian Totalitarianism".
There's lots of different manifestations, but most commonly say
CW: massive transphobia
"kids imagine stuff all the time, we shouldn't let the multi billion dollar medical industry profit off these kids"
Ya I know must of these treatments are reversible puberty blockers and these "kids" are all 15 and older.
Hossenfelder has always been cringey. University academics have a long history of thinking that because they have a PhD in a specific subject, their opinions on anything and everything unrelated to that subject must also be right.
Yeah, which is why Marxists, who have to know the sum total of all of human knowledge because every single shitlib on earth has a domain specific objection, have to write 500 page memes and sound like they're Derrida on magic mushrooms to get their ideas across with precision.
it's made us into very very smart boys with something like a university degree in truth, or whatever
I have a bit of insecurity/envy at the people in AES states getting like PhDs in Marxism (like :xi-reactionary-spotted:), while all of us are here trying our best to keep up with book groups and lectures.
Derrida
get their ideas across with precision.
I even like Derrida but I know those two don't go together.
I find it telling that whenever being trans is framed as a “fad” in this way, it’s always in a very narrow western/Christian context and it’s never mentioned that societies where crossing genders and/or embracing multiple genders is fairly common have always existed (like pre-colonial Philippines). It’s especially horrible when people who call themselves “scientists” present their cultural bias as fact without a second thought.
Even in Western European and Christian contexts, even in (generally bad) colonial contexts there are multiple cases of accepted Gender non-conforming communities, even with explicit recognition by the Catholic/Orthodox authorities. This crackdown is really a 19th-century High Colonial thing, though of course elements of it go back to the Reformation/Counterreformation.
A surprising example I often forget about is the Public Universal Friend, a Quaker evangelist who had a “resurrection” experience and spent the rest of their life as an openly non-binary traveling preacher in 18th century New England.
I was so angry to see this. I had no illusions about Sabine being anything but a lib and a scientist but her breakdown of bullshit in science news has been excellent and her perspective on modern physics has been thoroughly refreshing. Hell she even did a video on trans athletes that, imo as a cis person at least, had a reasonable conclusion? But this was such a major misstep when it really didn't have to be. So disappointing.
Yeah, given her reasoned article on trans athletes, seeing this was an incredible disappointment. In isolation it would simply be a bad take and a misreading of the science caused by overfocus on Psych papers. Such things happen to everyone occasionally, we all make mistakes and have brainworms.
But her political ignorance...how could she not know that her video would be immediately sharpened into a knife against trans people everywhere? How can you be so politically childish as to believe you can simply comment on this without staking a position and expect people to treat you as a neutral figure? It confuses and enrages me.
Exactly. It's terminal STEM brain. """Objective""" """facts""" can't possibly be used to hurt someone! This shit is literally why there exists the saying about "lies, damned lies, and statistics".
Real bad start. Saying that gender affirming care saves lives, as is the medical consensus and obviously true if you've spoken to trans people, is crazy? That's the equivalent opposite position to "the queer agenda is coming for your children" for you?
But I thought she was not-stupid on this so I'll hear her out.
e, live reaction:
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nice, hinting at the possibility of intersex conditions, but then dismissing them as irrelevant to the conversation with a dumb joke
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begins by delineating a difference between sex and gender, then explains that some trans people instead refer to "assigned gender at birth" as if it's a difference in terminology rather than a serious challenge to the notion of "biological sex" as it's commonly understood. i get why she would have trouble with this concept but i think it's a bad framing that doesn't help cis people understand what exactly is goin on here
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nice words that being trans is as normal as anything is, and not a recent development, acknowledgments of gendered cultural practices outside the western binary and the prevalence and real harm of transphobia. way better than i'd expect from the median transphobe.
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9 minutes in we get to the Littman ROGD paper! Sabine is rightly questioning the methodology and findings of it, and I think it's worth pointing out that Lisa Littman herself, while not disavowing it entirely, believes it's been widely misappropriated by transphobes... and then she gets to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics disputing the existence of ROGD and her criticisms of that paper come from Jesse Fucking Singal, the dickhead who has remade his career around scaring suburbanites that their daughters are being stolen away by the ROGD monster in the closet. Controversy!
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Getting into describing gender affirming care, she describes "top surgery" and "bottom surgery" (both of which refer to a wide variety of procedures) as "innocent sounding euphemisms" for "cutting off parts of the anatomy that are never coming back." (Yeah at that price I sure hope they're never coming back!) Points out that "some people are making a lot of money with this" as if that's not just what medicine is under capitalism. You gonna start telling people to take horse dewormer for their COVID next?
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lots of concerned noises about puberty blockers. it's true that their use in trans teens is relatively new and more research is always good, so why not just say this instead of mentioning (but not citing) inconclusive studies that you admit have small sample sizes? Then she goes on to hormone therapy, which, in contrast, is fairly well researched, so it's absolutely bizarre that she tears into a single recent 2 year study which has problems but showed a small benefit to HRT instead of the overwhelming body of evidence that it does in fact help trans peoples' mental health.
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A second Jesse Singal citation, mentioning him by name. Why, Sabine? He's not a scientist! He's a journalist, and even that's being generous! His job is advocating for extermination, you should not be giving this idiot the time of day!
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God she keeps talking about small sample sizes and no control groups but like, yeah! Trans people are a very tiny segment of the population, and the barriers to getting medical care are enormous! Of course that's going to make scientific research difficult, but it's not indicative of systematic incompetence in the field like she seems to imply.
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She considers the eminently reasonable argument that more people are trans now because being trans is something more people are allowed to be, but dismisses it because it doesn't explain the changing ratio between trans men and trans women. But like, could it be, perhaps, I don't know, under patriarchy, it's a lot harder to actively choose to be a woman, along with being openly transgender? Could it be that dysphoria is worse for trans women because the constraints placed on what a "real woman" is are much more restrictive than those placed on men? Are we even allowed to ask these questions, or are they too psychological and sociological for your hard-scientific lens?
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The "both sides" conclusion that I should have been expecting. Yes, more kids are trans because more kids are trans, but also maybe some of them "erroneously believe" they're trans. But like what does that even mean? That they're wrong about how they feel now? That they can't be relied upon to give testimony of their own experiences? What if it's fine to be "wrong"? What if we don't worry about it too much and just let them be trans without telling them they might be delusional up until the point they change their minds?
Christ I guess it wasn't as bad as it could have been (she pinned a very good comment), but she gives way too much credence to transphobic scum like Singal and their pearl clutching about how scary and sinister all this Gender Stuff is.
God she keeps talking about small sample sizes and no control groups but like, yeah! Trans people are a very tiny segment of the population, and the barriers to getting medical care are enormous! Of course that’s going to make scientific research difficult, but it’s not indicative of systematic incompetence in the field like she seems to imply.
Also you cannot perform randomized double-blind studies on trans healthcare at all. Blinding is simply impossible when the results of successful treatment are supposed to be visible with the naked eye.
And all of these problems should be immediately obvious to anybody who knows the tiniest bit about empirical science.
Scientists learn basic epistemology challenge: impossible.
Seriously the average scientist will espouse pure Popperianism as unequivocally true...and then immediately switch to the verificationist model they actually use every day.
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Yikes.
And then there are normal people like you and I who think both sides are crazy
Wow. Wow wowowowow
Side A: I want to be able to live my life as myself.
Side B: I want to murder you and anyone like you.
:very-intelligent: These sides are equally deranged!
In October she fell for the right-wing panic that Wikipedia was being "woke" and purposefully subjective. In reality Wikipedia was funding liberal anti-racist organizations. And the website has always been subjective as we all know. And in fact Wikipedia explicitly tells editors not to use primary sources. So you would think as a science communicator she would already have qualms with Wikipedia, but instead she only cares when the right tries to cancel it. Basically, this is now at least the second time she has fallen for right wing panic bait.
Isn't this the physics or engineering nerd? Why do they think they're ready to wade into this on any side other than unwavering support for the marginalized?
(The answer is usually the engineerish nerd's compulsion to feel like they know everything)
I suppose I should say, "not every engineerish person", but I do think the generalization usually holds, unfortunately. Big reactionary cultural issues among Anglo STEM dorks.
In isolation, it'd not be too bad.
But basically she quotes the evidence on Trans Children on puberty blockers, as well as psychological data in general, in a way that instead of saying "This is probably good but some questions on precise treatment programs remain" say "There are likely real Trans Children and fake Trans Children and we simply cannot know which is which via something like...say...superficial psychological counselling like we can for a myriad of other childhood and adolescent mental health issues because...reasons. I'm not going to recommend any action because I had spine dysphoria from a young age and had it removed." (but clearly the tone indicates a conservative approach)
This has (of course) been immediately run with by GCs to mean "Sabine, Noted Scientist and Correct Person, agrees with us that puberty blockers are dangerous and there's an epidemic of young girls being mutilated and young boys being lured by nonces into being trans, which doesn't exist. We must stop treatment immediately and drive trans activists into the sea!"
I'm posting about this a lot cause I'm mad, the whole bit about puberty blockers not being "safe" bc they can reduce bone density made me so fucking angry. We have ways to handle that down the road! Are we going to stop children from playing sports because they might permanently fuck up some muscle and need treatment later? Are we going to stop giving advanced placement classes because there's a chance it will screw up a kid's social development? There are tons of things that can have massive long term affects on kids for a short term benefit. We let them make calls like that all the time
Absolutely. (That said I was refused an advanced placement (skipping 2 years) class as a child due to social development concerns. Turns out I'd be Like This no matter what so jokes on them.)
She would be in the video section and not the dunk tank if we weren't having the same feelings about this.
She bombs the first minute with a classic :big-cool: Enlightened Centrist™ moment.
That's all I've seen as of this comment. Does it get any better?
I just finished watching it. TW: cisplaining video about trans people. After the first minute, she never says anything as dumb and reactionary as the first minute. Then she spends 20 minutes describing papers and statistics that feels like rambling. I think she spent too much time doing that, and not enough time saying some big clear message like "stop bullying, stop the culture war BS, just let real scientists work on figuring it all out". I regularly watch her physics stuff, so I'm just gonna make it really clear, I didn't get this video.
I felt her descriptions of said papers (which I've read) were deeply biased. In particular, she separates conclusion from explanation. She'll say "Study say trans=bad" and then ramble, and then say "But here are some concerns." and then instead of elaborating that that reverses the interpretation of the data entirely stops and goes onto the next paper. This repeats 4 times!
Jesus fucking Christ, physicists appreciate nuance about literally anything else challenge: impossible
Trans: "I deserve basic human rights like everyone else."
Libs: "Please ... you need to calm down ... I beg of you ... nuance ... moderation ... please ... I'm sorry but ... compromise ... please ... you need to calm down ..."
I fucking hate how this shit always revolves around puberty blockers. Blockers are the compromise. Trans kids should just get the right hormones instead so they can have a normal young adult life. Which is what they do with cis kids.
yewtube link https://yewtu.be/watch?v=oR_RAp73ra0
it might be worth going to youtube to support the trans people in the comments though
